(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus showing graphical interactive screens for remote control, and to the peripheral units.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
The use of remote controllers has spread to facilitate the manipulation of today's household appliances such as audio-visual apparatuses, and one remote controller is furnished for one appliance in general. However, it is quite cumbersome to manage a plurality of remote controllers.
In addition, a remote controller in a broad sense, or a display on the screen that enables the users to make a variety of selections, was developed and has been in practical use for the interactive TV (television) system and TV game players. However, this type of remote controller also faces problems such as facilitating manipulation and saving manufacturing cost.
To eliminate the above problems, a multi-remote controller, or otherwise known as a system remote controller, was developed and has been commercially available. The multi-remote controller includes a transmitter that controls a plurality of appliances of various types in one kind (for example, TVs made by a plurality of makers), or various kinds of appliances (for example, TV and VTR (video tape recorder)), so that the user can control a plurality of appliances with one multi-remote controller by selecting the appliance he wishes to control. Alternately, the multi-remote controller may include the buttons necessary for the manipulation of all the appliances. However, in either case, the user must select a desired appliance first, meaning that the multi-remote controller must include the selection button.
To compensate the drawback of the multi-remote controller, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2-180497 discloses a remote controller comprising a remote control unit for transmitting remote control signals for a plurality of appliances to be controlled, and receiver units furnished with each appliance for receiving the remote controller signals for their respective appliances. Note that each receiver unit transmits a unique signal to the remote controller unit, so that the receiver unit stores data as to which control signal should be transmitted to which appliance, eliminating the appliance selection process and hence the selection button.
However, this remote controller is available only to the predetermined appliances and functions, and it must include a ultra red ray signal transmitter and buttons for each predetermined function. Thus, although the selection button can be omitted, the remote controller still includes a large number of buttons if it controls more than one kind of appliance (for example, TV and VTR), because the buttons for channel selection and volume adjustment for the TV receiver, and those for playback and record functions for the VTR must be furnished separately. Further, the design of the remote controller can not be changed flexibly, and unnecessary buttons under a particular situation are still furnished and the control signals for such buttons are stored in the memory as well. Thus, neither the design is adequate nor the memory is utilized efficiently, complicating the manipulation of the remote controller more than necessary.
Also, a TV-VTR compound apparatus, which is controlled by menu information defined in advance, has been developed However, it is impossible to control a plurality of appliances as an integral system; for the menu information varies depending on the state of each appliance, such as interconnection and power ON/OFF.
Further, a menu processing method, disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 3-233660, was developed. This method enables the retrieval of a desired application program by switching the menu displays regardless of which terminal or host computer stores the application program in a computer environment where a plurality of terminals are interconnected via a network.
However, the information as to which terminal or host computer stores the secondary and subsequent order menus must be written into each item in the menu in advance. Thus, it is impossible to control a plurality of appliances as an integral system; for the menu information varies depending on the state of each appliance, such as interconnection and power ON/OFF.
In addition, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 3-172086 discloses a program receiver which can display texts and graphics for the operation manual or guidance of the CATV (Cable TV) system, either related or unrelated to the program being broadcasted, on the screen. This will be explained more in detail while referring to FIG. 1 depicting the structure of the program receiver. A terminal 101 includes a character generator 103 for generating texts and graphics displayed on a screen 102, a memory 104 storing all the patterns for the texts and graphics transmitted from a head-end of the CATV station in advance, a switcher 107 for inputting signals from the character generator 103 or memory 104 into a TV receiver 106 instead of or together with the outputs from a tuner 105. The text and graphical information, or namely the operation manual or guidance and the information either related or unrelated to the program being broadcasted, is transmitted from the head end in advance to upgrade the utility of the CATV system.
In this system, program distributors supply the interactive screen generation information for each program to the CATV station in advance, so that the information is transmitted from the head-end to the memory 104 each time a program is switched, supplying an adequate interactive screen for each program. However, this complicates the retransmission of the program. As well, each time the user switches a channel, the head-end detects the switching and transmits the interactive screen generation information for the switched program to the memory 104, making the process at the head-end cumbersome.
In addition, a technique such that enables the user to set the functions of the VTR and TV game players by using the display on the TV receiver was developed. The household appliances of this type include a circuit for generating a user interface screen, and a terminal for outputting image signals generated by the circuit to an external appliances. The external output terminal is connected to an external image signal input terminal of the TV receiver via an image signal cable to switch TV receiver's signal input to the external image signal input terminal. Thus, the TV receiver displays the input image signal from the external image signal input terminal, supplying the user interface screen to the user.
The graphical display apparatus used for CAD (Computer Aided Design) also employs the user interface screen. Here, the host computer transmits figure definition instructions: combination and display position of basic elements (segments, arcs, characters, etc.), and attribution specification such as display allowance or disallowance. The graphical display apparatus interprets the figure definition instructions and then displays figures as per instructions on the screen. The definition of a figure composed of the same basic elements can be given only by copying the definition of the element and changing the display position attribute. Thus, the figure definition instructions for one element is transmitted from the host computer only once, saving the information transmission time for the host computer. However, in case of a multi-layer structure such as a menu manipulation screen to switch a layer as per user's instruction, the screen is cleared (the defined figure data are deleted) each time a layer is switched, and all the figure definition instructions are transmitted again for the switched layer. Alternately, the figure data for all the layers may be defined in advance, and an instruction is sent each time a layer is switched to disallow the display of the attribute of the figure data in the currently displayed layer, and another instruction is sent to allow the display of the figure data for the switched layer.
However, using the user interface screen with the household appliances such as the VTR causes the following problems:
(1) the user-interface-screen generation circuit must be furnished for each appliance, causing the manufacturing cost to increase. Thus, this technique is applied only to limited appliances. PA1 (2) the image input for the TV receiver must be switched to the external image signal input. This is not a drawback for the VTR or TV game players activated by switching the image input to the external image signal input. However, it is quite inconvenient if functions for an air conditioner or the like are set in this manner. Although such inconvenience can be eliminated by furnishing the user interface screen to the air conditioner, it costs more than furnishing the user-interface-screen generation circuit. PA1 (3) the appliances and TV receiver must be connected via the image signal cable. Since the image signal cable is an essential component for the VTR and TV game player, this is not crucial for such appliances. However, this is quite inconvenient if the appliances, which can be used independently of the image signal cable, are controlled in this manner. Although such inconvenience can be eliminated by furnishing the user interface screen, it costs more than furnishing the user-interface-screen generation circuit as was with the secondly mentioned problem. PA1 (4) the graphical display apparatus is connected to the host computer in the level of the basic elements to realize a variety of displays, thus many a figure definition instruction is received from the host computer when switching the display. This causes to increase the load in the host computer, and makes the real time transmission impossible if a high-transmission rate communication route is employed. More precisely, micro computers for the household appliances are less efficient compared with the one for host computer, and the transmission rate is set relatively low to save the transmission cost. Thus, it is not easy to display the graphical interactive screens on the graphical display apparatus using the display information.